


And in their triumph die, like fire and powder

by madstoryteller999



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A genuine inspection into what may have existed between the two (as canon as possible), A sort of character analysis of Dumbledore has ensued?, But this is definitely inspired by the Mirror of Erised scene in COG, By canon I mean the original Harry Potter books, Inserted scene in Half-Blood Prince, M/M, No real COG spoilers, What constitutes 'genuine' love?, Who can love?, what is love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 00:31:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16821535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madstoryteller999/pseuds/madstoryteller999
Summary: On the eve of his death, Albus Dumbledore goes to Nurmengard.





	And in their triumph die, like fire and powder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JiMoriartea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JiMoriartea/gifts).



To come to Nurmengard was to commit a grievous error: an error of judgement of grievous proportions. Albus has always known this to be true.

For so long, too, he had abided by this warning and striven to guard against his weaker self.

Truly, he would have liked to have stood here now and felt he had succeeded in this regard—and yet, nearing the end as he was, it was impossible to believe it true.

It was the weak, mortal man, after all, who had emerged once again to insulate Harry Potter rather than train him: a devastating development for a man tasked with guiding their side of the war to victory. This had led to an unimaginable number of mistakes. He had nurtured the boy, rather than prepared him. He had coddled him, rather than told him the truth. He had done a terrible thing to Harry Potter in caring for him, and others had paid the price.

But then, had there ever been a war for Albus, where he hadn’t stumbled—where lives had not been cruelly lost—because of love?

He should be thankful, perhaps, that at least the object of his care had been better chosen this time. And there was no doubt that Harry Potter was among the best of his kind. The boy had an unmatched heart and, for this, would be a better man than Albus had ever been. Humanity could, in some, be a beautiful thing. In others, it showed its ugliest strokes. 

If Albus had been the sort of family man he often presented himself to be, he imagined one could have no better son. To thirst too much for knowledge—to place mind over heart—was to fear what others did not think to contemplate and to face the temptation of the unimaginable to conquer that fear. It was a curse that would never plague Lily and James’ son, a unique failing he would never succumb to.

Albus Dumbledore knew very well he had failed. And he had failed greatly—not because he had been great—but because he had, as a man, committed terrible wrongs made all the more devastating by his unique prowess.

This was not something he had always understood. Albus had grown up with the unwavering sense that he was different from the ones around him. But ‘different’ was too kind, because what he had really thought had been worse. Albus was _special_ —intended for greatness—and everyone from his mother to his professors had said it.

Once, he had believed he was accordingly entitled to certain rights (certain transgressions) others were not—in order to serve the greater good.

It was a terrible belief to entertain. Monstrous.

Yet, even after the war that had almost ruined him, even after that war had thrust him fully into the dark, grimy mires of guilt that would entrap him for the rest of his life, even after that phrase had become anathema to him, the impression had somehow persisted. Albus was still great, for all his failings. He had failed so greatly only _because_ he was great. 

He had believed, for many, many years, that with the same weapon of his greatness, he could atone.

Now, he wondered if it wasn’t the condition of greatness, but perhaps a sort of megalomania, that had made him, Tom Riddle, and so many others succumb to wrongdoing in varying degrees.

As it happened, nothing like the prospect of death made one confront one’s own mortality, one’s own fallibility, so keenly. And in the past few months, Albus had realized the fallacy fully, enough to eradicate any lasting iota of this belief from within himself. Atonement did not require power of body or mind—but heart.

Alas, his heart was the weakest part of him.

Perhaps, it was precisely this failing that explained—at the end of his life, fifty two years since the end of the war—why he finally found himself here.

(Or had it been fool’s play to imagine the outcome could be anything else?)

* * *

Albus had never been inside Nurmengard. But he had dreamt of it—terrible visions that had woken him at odd hours of the night, pale and trembling.

It was a place he had avoided through years of deflection and maneuvering around ministry officials and foreign politicians.

It was almost laughable, now, to see so many years of effort so easily made meaningless.

Albus had entered the prison not precisely with permission, so he made his way cautiously. He did not know his destination, but guessed it to be in the prison’s bowels: its deepest, darkest. The parts that never saw the light of day.

He wondered if this was what Dante had imagined when he wrote himself descending into hell with Virgil. Circles, he remembered vaguely. Circles were what his feet traced now, as the halls around him grew darker and darker and he made his way down.

Albus’s guess had been right (weren’t his worst always?). They had kept him precisely where he had believed, never to feel the warmth of the sun or the rain or the wind again. Even from behind the large, stone slab that functioned as a primitive door to the prison’s lowest depths—inscribed from dungeon floor to ceiling with runes meant to restrict and imprison—Albus could _feel_ who was on the other side.

Despite himself—despite the foolhardiness that had brought him here—he hesitated. It wasn’t too late to turn back. What now, after so many years, could this accomplish?

But his presence had already been discovered.

Part of Albus couldn’t even be surprised when the magic he had once adored washed over him. The feats this magic had accomplished had once been relegated only to the gods; time had not made him impervious to its greatness. Paralyzed for a moment, it took him a moment more to realize what it had accomplished.

He looked down to find the pale hands of youth instead of his own, old, wizened—one pale and one blackened by a curse. Slowly, he lifted his hands to his face, feeling the smooth, naïve skin of the boy he had been when they had first met. It was a transfiguration spell, undoubtedly archaic and immensely complex.

Albus face darkened, wondering at the intention behind this.

A second later, the slab of stone cracked, parting in the middle. The massive blocks moved with devastating slowness, inch by inch hard won until finally revealing a cage.

The cage was brutally small despite the expanse of the room—scarcely two meters by two meters. In contradiction to the incomprehensible magic done to Albus and the rock, the cage remained utterly uncompromised. The hardest, most powerful of the runes were on the cage’s metal, he knew. Albus had been the one to make it. (A task he had accepted as his right penance, for failing to fight earlier. For failing to kill him.)

“Albus,” the voice emerged from the creature sitting in the middle of the cage. A young man with achingly beautiful features, tousled blonde hair that shadowed dangerous, passionate dark eyes and a pale chiseled face _._ Just as the day they had first met.

Albus’s stomach clenched, and he hoped that his face did not betray his terror. To see this, after all these years— He had seen this face for so many nights in the Mirror of Erised, precisely at this age (a time when, some foolish part of him thought, they had been their happiest, as though happiness was ever something they could have achieved).

He had not been prepared for this.

The man, though appearing not fully a man but just at the age of leaving boyhood, stood and walked to the edge of the cage. Pale, long fingered hands wrapped themselves against the bars.

“Won’t you say something, Albus?” Gellert Grindelwald murmured, sounding as silver-tongued as he ever had. This was the voice that had called hundreds of thousands of men and women to war. The voice that had seduced nations.

He knew why, now, the other man had transfigured them into this. This was when Gellert’s hold over Albus had been its strongest.

Gellert had never loved him—an undeniable truth; his own memories, from the very beginning (which he had reviewed over and over and over—) revealed the same, though Albus had denied it then, had wished desperately otherwise. Those had only been a desperate man’s self-delusions.

Still, no other human being—no other creature in the entire universe—had ever fit Albus like Gellert had at that time. No one had ever drawn him, consumed him, like this one person.

(After Gellert there had been no one else.)

Albus stood for a moment, then stepped forward, allowing the sparse light from the torches above to fall on him.

A second later, a hand moved with devastating carelessness and he felt the robes he had been wearing shift into clothes of nearly a century past.

“Ah,” the man breathed, pressing his face between the bars. His gaze was cold. “Now that completes the picture, doesn’t it?”

Albus didn’t flinch, merely gazed solemnly back. But he felt more vulnerable now than he had when he had learned what the ring had done to him.

“Is this what you want,” Albus asked, “To return to the past?”

“I’ve had a lot of time in here,” the former Dark Lord responded, voice almost a whisper. His voice was lower in timbre than before. “I’ve even written a play. In my head, of course. But I’m sure the common swine will love it. It has something for every audience, as they say. Adventure, camaraderie, danger—” his voice was ragged now, cruel—“ _betrayal_ —”

“Murder,” Albus finished, coldly now as well.

“Ah,” the man he loved hissed, white, teeth bared, “now two of us did _that_ , didn’t we?”

Albus didn’t try to deny it. It was true. It didn’t matter who had cast the actual curse. His breath caught.

“Red hair,” Gellert laughed darkly—and it was a beautiful laugh still—“I always thought it an old wives’ tale. Superstition. Perhaps, I should have listened. Stayed away.”

Albus’s hair had been auburn, not quite red. A meaningless distinction, now, of course.

“Regret it all?” Gellert asked silkily. “Is that why you’re here? Do you mean to lay yourself prostrate at my feet and beg for forgiveness?”

The other’s face wasn’t quite so vicious now—genial almost. It was good enough, close enough to the smile (dark, dangerous, and so, terribly mischievous) that had for the first time in his life made him know what it felt like to be made speechless.

Perhaps, this was enough to justify this whole venture. This face—so real, so concrete, unblemished by the cruelty of time. An image to hold in his mind as he died.

Of course, then the image fractured.

“ _Well?_ ” Gellert snarled, fists crashing into the metal now with a deafening clang. “What have you to say, Albus? When you’ve made blood oaths as tawdry an affair as marriage? You vowed never to raise your wand to me.”

“You forced my hand,” Albus answered. His eyes fixated somewhere above the other man’s head. “And let us not forget, Gellert, that you planned to have me killed too.”

The other man paused, face terrifying. Then he let out a bark of ugly laughter, swinging back. “And I was so close, wasn’t I?”

Incredibly so.

“But _let us_ not forget who betrayed who first,” Gellert said, cold again now. His voice was darker, older. “You’ve brought yourself here to me, like a dog that’s been kicked by its master but still returns, because it knows it deserves punishment _._ ”

Not punishment, Albus thought bitterly. Something _else_ , long withheld from it. But then, Gellert never could understand, could he?

“I saw an equal in you,” the man continued, face inhumanly beautiful and terrible. His hands moved, as though to hold Albus’s face, even though he stood a meter away. “I would have given us the world. But you couldn’t take it, could you? You were…too… _weak_.”

“I was weak,” Albus admitted. “I have grown old, Gellert, but I have changed little in that regard. I was weak to feel the way I did for you—”

“ _Feel,_ ” Gellert said derisively, ruthlessly, “What did you _feel_?”

Albus smiled without humor. “You know what I felt.”

His face only grew more bloodthirsty. “What a harlot your sentiment is, then, liable to open its legs for anyone. Was that what happened, Albus? Did someone fuck you, and did you merely follow him to the battlefield? To fight _ME?_ ”

And now, Albus did flinch, to hear it spoken of this way. Gellert had always been silver-tongued, unbelievably persuasive—but also unbelievably cruel.

“Don’t,” Albus whispered. His spectacles had disappeared amidst the transfiguration, leaving blue eyes to meet dark as they hadn’t in fifty years.

“Don’t,” Gellert mocked.

Albus exhaled. And yet, he had known this would happen. Coming here had been a mistake, and, still, he had knowingly done it. Everything he faced, he undoubtedly deserved.

But Albus was a weak man, so he decided it was time to leave.

He took one step back. Gellert’s head snapped up. As he moved to take another step, the other man spoke up, words lazily delivered. “Changing morals aside, weakness aside, a promise is a promise and you broke one, Albus Dumbledore. I’ll accept an answer as your first payment.”

Albus paused. “An answer. Not escape?”

“I am aware the world has moved on to another,” Gellert said, smiling beatifically. “It spurned me, and now I no longer have the desire to make it glorious. Like you, it has proven itself unworthy.”

Albus felt tired, now. Old. “What is it you want to know?”

“Why did you come?”

He debated lying—but, he remembered slowly, this man alone had always known when he had lied.

“I wanted to see you.”

“And what else?” Gellert asked, impatiently now. As though what he had heard bored him, could only provide idle amusement. Until the next, amusing thing came along. As though he hadn’t demanded this with the only leverage he still had.

Albus’s mouth tasted like blood.

“I didn’t have much time left.”

Gellert’s lips twisted, brushing the bar as he tilted his head. “Busy days ahead, I imagine, with another Dark Lord running around.”

“Precisely.”

“He doesn’t sound nearly as fun as I was. Quite boring,” Gellert added, a familiar smile flickering across his face briefly. Then, it grew vicious. “Even you—quite boring, in the end.”

Gellert drew himself to his full height now. His gaze rested on Albus for a brief second more; it was as different as it could have been from how the man had looked at him in the beginning, so many years ago. Once, there had been a reciprocation of fascination—it had been obsession.

“Do tell the guards I prefer filet mignon on your way out,” Gellert remarked lazily. “The food has been rather subpar for the last five decades.”

It was a dismissal, if he had ever heard one.

The man turned his back on Albus without a further glance. Albus didn’t want to know the face he made to his back.

“Goodbye, Gellert,” Albus said quietly. These would be, he understood, his last words to this man.

* * *

Of course, what Albus always failed to remember was that—for all his accumulated merits, for all his claimed brilliance—he had always miscalculated when it came to Gellert.

Tom Riddle had been a brilliant student, had grown to become a terrible but still brilliant man; yet Albus, for the most part, had in these years been able to predict his motivations, his actions, his fears quite adeptly.

Not so with Gellert.

Which was why, when he made it just out of line of sight of the cage, he thought he must have imagined the small, almost inaudible noise he heard. Imagined, because it did not reconcile with what he had calculated to be the inevitable outcome of this encounter.

And when the very walls surrounding him made a mighty effort to bend inward, to block his path, he thought he must have imagined that as well, because this too did not reconcile—

“Stop.”

Albus did. Mostly, because whatever he had predicted to follow, it had not been that voice. Not the way that one, curt word had been said.

“You said you didn’t have much time left,” Gellert dispassionately. “What does that mean?”

Albus’s froze, before forcing his back to relax. “Exactly as you said,” he said calmly. “I have another Dark Lord to contend with.”

“Albus,” Gellert demanded now; it was a terrible sound, laden with murder. “You are _lying._ ”

And Albus was, without a doubt, caught off guard. He hadn’t been completely lying, but he certainly had not been telling the complete truth. To lie further or not to lie? And yet, what did it even matter, at this point?

Perhaps, the truth would give Gellert some measure of peace.

“I have lived a long, privileged life,” Albus said finally, his tone even. “But, as it does with all, my time has come—”

“ _No._ ”

Loud cracks sounded on either side of Albus. The stone walls of the prison cell were splitting.

“Voldemort?” the man said, voice icy, “You would let _him_ do this to you?”

Albus paused, mind working at rapid speed. “In a manner of speaking,” he said finally. “I was careless. My carelessness may serve…strategic purposes.”

“You mean you have carelessly spent your life,” Gellert said, teeth bared, “despite the fact that it has always been _mine_.”

Albus straightened, shoulders tight as he stalked forward. And yes, _now_ , he felt just as he had often as a younger man. He was furious. 

“Careful,” Dumbledore said dangerously. “Or I may receive the wrong impression.”

He was close to the cage now. Too close. Gellert closed the distance he could, leaving a scarce inch between them. Strong, familiar hands left the metal bars to knot themselves in his hair with painful force.

“The hallows,” the former Dark Lord ordered coldly, “gather them—”

“You surprise me, Gellert,” Albus said humorlessly. “I did not believe you so vengeful, that you would wish immortality on your enemy before letting him succumb to another’s attacks. As it happens, I have no interest in mastering death. I fear a great many things, but death is not one of them.”

Gellert met these words with growing spite. “No, let us both leave that to young upstarts such as the current Dark Lord. Nevertheless, you will _not_ let this happen, because I will not allow it.”

“And yet, the world does not always abide by what you would allow,” Albus answered. “You may have taken note of this by now.”

Had he not known better, he would have called the expression that crossed Gellert’s face …

Albus’s eyes narrowed. He was unsure of the other’s intentions. Where had the other man’s indifference gone? Why the seeming absence of vengeful satisfaction?

Ah, but then—Gellert had always been proud.

“I suppose you would have appreciated the honor yourself,” Albus acknowledged.

It was though the other man had not heard him. Gellert’s dark gaze was hot, his breath almost as warm as he spoke with ferocious intensity. “If you let this happen, it will be greatest betrayal of your lifetime. If there is a hell, I hope the gods send you to it to _suffer_ in agony for the rest of eternity,” he spat.

“A betrayal,” Albus echoed, raising an eyebrow.

“You will not leave me again,” Gellert snarled, “ _I will not allow it_.”

At these words, as though driven by some latent self-preservation instinct, Albus tried to draw back. He did not get far, because the hands in his hair knotted themselves further, wrenching strands of auburn to the point of piercing pain to keep him in place.

“I don’t—” Albus choked out. Was this? No. It couldn’t be. His voice strengthened, restored to its previous calm. “What futile game are you playing? You wanted to kill me.”

“I wanted,” Gellert agreed, voice dark. “Oh, Albus, I _wanted_ to do terrible things to you; if only you knew—” he smiled terribly—“you would never have shown yourself here. But your fate if I had won the war would not have been death; it would have far, far worse for you. I would have _enslaved_ you. I would have made you what you feared most, just for my pleasure.”

The former Dark Lord continued in a low, impassioned murmur, terrifying in its beauty “You would have begged for death. But I would never have given it to you. And I will kill him before I let him kill you now. I _do not care_ for your machinations.”

Albus’s chest ached fiercely, his once sharp mind in shambles. He could not comprehend the words he had just heard. They were nonsensical.

“It’s too late,” he said dazedly.

Gellert bared his teeth in a crude impression of a smile. “You think I could not escape this prison? I have a compelling incentive, now; as you know, I have always done my best work with compelling incentives.”

Albus’s hands trembled before his magic flared, removing the transfiguration just enough to reveal what had happened.

Gellert’s gaze snapped downwards with lightning quickness.

“I’ve been cursed,” Albus said directly.

“The hallows—”

“It was the ring that did this,” He smiled. “I was hasty. I wanted to see her. I needed her forgiveness.” 

Gellert’s face twisted into something hateful. “I see killing her didn’t do the job. Even in death, she stands between us—”

“Don’t,” Albus interrupted, hard now. “As I said, I am not interested in being master of death.”

He looked down and then up again, meeting the other man’s gaze unwillingly, like a moth drawn to a flame. He couldn’t look away.

“A counter curse.” Gellert’s jaw was clenched so tightly it seemed liable to break.

“Some curses are unfixable.”

“Impossible,” he rejected haughtily. “Not for the likes of me. Not for the likes of you.”

“Even if that were true,” Albus allowed, “I am out of time.”

And in the next fraction of a second, Gellert lost all semblance of control.

His magic whipped out like towering, powerful tides against a too-soft shore, only mangling it.

“You _wasted_ time, didn’t you?” he roared, his eyes accusing above pale, livid features. “You wasted it on saving meaningless, swine lives when you should have left them to rot!”

“No,” Albus said, firmly now. His gaze was disgusted—and pitying. “You never did understand, did you? That what should be treasured most in this world is not power or knowledge, but the bonds between individuals. The human inclination to love is a beautiful thing, an honorable thing."

Gellert paused. Then, his voice emerged, low, rougher, wrought with uncharacteristic imperfection.

“You think,” he breathed, his gaze a violent challenge, “that I do not know love?”

And abruptly, because he was only a man, and a terribly flawed one—Albus too lost all calm. His face grew white with hot, grating fury. “ _Enough._ Don’t try to invent a love for me that has never existed. You cannot change my mind, whatever ulterior motive you may have.”

Gellert gave an ugly smile. “You think I’m lying? Of course you do. You think only the ‘good’ have a monopoly on love.”

His hands slid down from Albus’s hair to grip the sides of face. “Love isn’t as infallible, as full of sanctity, as you would like to think it. You think a man can’t murder and mutilate and also love?”

“What he feels,” Albus interjected harshly, “is not love.”

Gellert jeered disparagingly. “You’re lying to yourself, now. You want to pretend love is selfless? When a mother sacrifices herself for her child, it’s because she’s decided life without it would be more unbearable than death. Your touted _love_ is the most selfish condition a human can suffer, not the paragon of purity you would have it be. If it were, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with _me_ , now would you?"

And Albus, for all his intelligence—well, he’d been cornered now, hadn’t he? Only a good man could love, but Albus knew he wasn’t a good man. And yet, he could not call whatever he felt for Gellert by any other name. No other word in the English language—no other sentiment in human conception—could suffice.

(He had always loved him. From the very moment the other had opened that terrible mouth.)

Nails dug into the sides of his face, prompting pain. But the warm, callous part of Gellert’s palms, contradictorily, seemed almost as though to cradle his face.

“I’ve never been able to let you go,” Gellert whispered, eyes flickering across his face. “For years, in the worst prison wizard kind could make to contain me, I could not forget you. I have no other word for it _. Love_. A conglomeration of soft, _weak_ syllables, unfitting for such a debilitating, brutal sentiment.”

Albus’s lips were tight. “When a man commits sins such as the ones you have, Gellert, he cannot love. It is impossible.”

“I would have enslaved you _for_ love,” Gellert murmured, nevertheless, dark eyes bright, “I would have made your life a living hell because of my _love_. It’s a dark, twisted thing, Albus, different from what’s housed within you, certainly. You would shudder to see it. But it lives within me, still.”

In this moment, Albus thought he may finally be able to muster the hatred he had been unable to summon before.

But Gellert was no longer looking at him. A dark cloud had passed over his face again, transforming it into something monstrous once more. “I will kill him,” he said softly, “for the role he plays in your death. Perhaps I will not hold the wand. But he will come to me; what he wants most, I will not give him. And though he will not know it, though the world may never discover it, this will lead to his death.”

His attention fixated on Albus again, a wide, gruesome smile on his face. “Why, Albus. It seems _love_ will save the wizarding world after all, doesn’t it?”

And now Albus could bear no more. He wrenched himself away.

Gellert hissed, “Where do you think you are going?”

Albus could not look at him, so he turned away. “There are things I must do. In preparation.”

“No,” he commanded, eyes wide. “You will stay here, with me. Until the end, Albus. You will _remain here_.”

The walls began to cave in again, but Albus no longer could stand to stay, and his magic made it known. The path to his exit remained open.

“I love you,” Gellert raged. “Didn’t you hear me? _You would walk away from me now_?”

“You don’t,” Albus charged softly. “But I do, still.”

He continued walking away, ignoring the thunderous cacophony growing behind him due to the other man’s rage.

“ _DON’T WALK AWAY FROM ME!”_ Gellert roared, “I will cut up that boy, Albus! Your little champion—I will cut him into pieces and return him piece by piece to those who care for him!”

Albus turned, gaze glittering with terrible warning. “If what you said was true, you won’t do anything to ruin what I have died for. And even if not—could you really bear to make my death so meaningless? Me, your equal?”

His own abilities in this field had never been prodigious, but he could see the words—carefully chosen—do their work.

“ _Mein gleich,_ ” the Dark Lord whispered. Without warning, the transfiguration on both men disappeared, revealing the damaged, withering creatures left behind.

“Goodbye, Gellert,” Albus said. He lifted his cursed hand aimlessly, too far to touch him.

“I will follow,” Gellert promised, face intent. “You won’t wait long.”

Albus gazed at him for a brief moment more. And then, with a crack, he disappeared.

* * *

He would never hear the terrible roars that sounded after—wild and animalistic.

He would never know, too, the impenetrable silence that followed the news of his death, maintained for months on end, broken only by the visit of a Dark Lord.

He would never know that Gellert Grindelwald kept his word, in the end—that Tom Marvolo Riddle would die precisely because of the knowledge his predecessor withheld from him. Or that Gellert truly would do it precisely for one and just one reason: Albus Dumbledore.

* * *

**Author's Note:** To be honest, I have always had a hard time liking Dumbledore as a character because of his rather Machiavellian behavior and his failure to train/inform Harry adequately for the task set ahead of him in the series. A large part of this one-shot has come from a place of my attempting to understand him. The other part--the Grindelwald/Dumbledore part--comes from my persisting fascination with this relationship (reignited by the FB movies), even when I have struggled with liking Dumbledore. I think this relationship is one of the most emotionally complex bonds Rowling has offered her readers. Could the obsession Grindelwald reciprocated be recognized as a sort of love, after all? It's hard to dismiss the statement Grindelwald makes in the circumstances of his own death (in the books). I think that could be interpreted as a true testament to what Dumbledore may have meant to him.

Anyway--would love to know what you think! Thanks for reading :)


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